THE DOTEREL ' COURT-MARTIAL.
TRE finding of the 'Doterel' Court-martial is hypothetical in substance, though categorical in form. The Court assigns a cause and suggests an occasion for the explosion by which the ship was destroyed. It is of opinion that there were two distinct explosions ; that the seat of the first was the -coal-bunkers, and the seat of the second the fore magazine ; that the second was the result of the first ; and that a light introduced into the bunker may have set fire to the gas evolved from the coal. It is clear that if once the hypothesis of an ex- ,plosion of gas in the coal-bunkers is accepted, there is no difficulty in supposing that the inflamed gas found its way into the interior of the magazine. All that was wanted to make such a passage of gas possible was the breaking of a .copper pipe connected with the machinery for flooding the magazine. There is certainly nothing to show that this is not a correct account of the explosion ; the only weakness in the explanation is that there is scarcely more to show that it is a correct account of it. It is all mere conjecture,—plausible and even probable conjecture, but con- jecture still. Professor Abel's evidence, on which the finding of the Court was mainly founded, went to show that if there had been an accumulation of gas in the coal-bunkers, what really happened was just what might have been expected to happen. The gas which escapes from coal is highly explosive, and supposing it to have been generated in the bunkers, the precautions taken to get rid of it were quite inadequate to the need. The removal of the lids, which was one of the methods adopted for securing proper ventilation, would have little or no effect in making the air in the bunkers less dangerous. It is even possible, Professor Abel thinks, that it may have made matters worse. The pipe which formed the other provision for ventilation would afford no better security against an explosion. " There would be no ventilation," says Professor Abel, "except when the ship was under weigh." Altogether, therefore, the ventila- tion, as Professor Abel puts it, " though, perhaps, quite efficient when the ship was under steam, obviously partook of an acci- dental character." With this statement before it, together with the further assurance that much of the coal, even of the best quality, supplied to the Navy is highly charged with gas, and consequently, in the absence of efficient ventilation, may have filled the bunker with explosive gas, and the possibility that, as the ship was about to coal, a light may have been introduced into the bunker for the purpose of examining it, the Court thought that it was in a position to form a conclusion. Had all the crew been alive, this latter link in the chain might have broken down. But as the light may have been introduced, and, indeed, natur-
ally would have been introduced, by one of the victims of the explosion, the hypothesis is, at all events, beyond disproof.
Assuming this to be the true account of the explosion, what are we to think of the administration of the Navy ? A ship is so constructed that if an explosion takes place in the coal bunkers, it is almost certain to communicate with the magazine, and so to produce the result with which the loss of the 'Doterel' has made us so familiar. The coal contained in these bunkers is exceedingly likely to generate gas of a highly explosive kind, and when this gas is present in the bunkers, the accidental in tro- ducticn of a light in the course of the ordinary working of the ship would be sufficient to cause an explosion. There is only one way in which these consequences can be rendered impossible, and that is by an efficient system of through ventilation. Re- moving the lids of the bunkers at fixed intervals will not do it, and a pipe of the kind and dimensions with which the
Doterel ' was fitted will not do it. These facts are stated by Professor Abel, without reserve or qualification. He speaks as though there were no doubt whatever about them. Venti- lation of the coal-bunkers is essential to the safety of a ship ; ventilation can only be effected by such-and-such methods ; these methods were not in existence on board the Doterel.' How is it that facts which Professor Abel puts forward as things of course are unknown to the Constructors of the Navy ? There is nothing to show that the Doterel' was worse found, as regards ventilation, than any other ship of her class ; and if she was not, the inevitable conclusion is that one whole class of her Majesty's ships, and possibly other classes as well, are without the ventilation which experts know to be indispensable as a safeguard against the generation of explosive gas. It is quite inexplicable how the builders of the Doterel ' could have been ignorant of what Professor Abel evidently regards as a perfectly obvious neces- sity. They must be presumed to have known that ventilation was wanted, else why did they add that four-inch pipe which, though it was " perhaps efficient" when the ship was under steam, gave no ventilation at all when the ship was not moving ? But what is the good of an amount of scientific knowledge which tells its possessor that there is a danger to be averted, but leaves him wholly ignorant as to the proper means of averting it ? The builder of a ship should know, not merely that, under certain conditions, ventilation is needed to prevent the generation of explosive gas—that is a piece of information which comes as news to no one—but what machinery is needed to constitute ventilation. The authori- ties at the Dockyards seem in this respect to be no better off than so many civilians taken at random out of the street. They are aware that some provision must be made for ventilation, and they think that a four-inch pipe is all that is necessary. Then comes the expert, and calmly tells them—after the explosion has taken place—that a four- inch pipe is of next to no use at all. " Everybody," he says in effect, " who has learned the alphabet of ventilation knows that your pipe will be certainly worthless when the ship is not under steam, and it is quite possible that it may be worthless even then." It would be incredible, but for Professor Abel's evidence, that the Dockyard Authorities should have been left to learn this for the first time after a Queen's ship had been lost, and a large part of her crew killed, presumably from the absence of better ventilation than a four-inch pipe can give.
When the scientific people engaged in building a ship can be in this state of profound ignorance upon a matter at once so elementary and so important, it is not wonderful that the officer in command of the ship should have been no better informed. Commander Evans seems to have no idea of the need. of any ventilation beyond such as was afforded by the occasional removal of the bunker-lids. This precaution, which to him stood in the place of the whole apparatus which Professor Abel holds to have been necessary to make the ship safe, did nothing to keep off an explosion, and possibly something to precipitate one. In spite of this, however, it was the only precaution of which Commander Evans had ever heard. So far as the removal of the lids went, he seems to have taken care that it was done, and it was not his fault that he did not know that this might almost as well have been left undone. The finding of the Court acquits Commander Evans of all blame in respect of the loss of the Doterel.' It seems to us that the people who were really on their trial were those responsible for that absence of ventilation which seems to have been the actual cause of the loss of the ship.
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